Chan Lowe: The NRA and gun control

cartoon by Chan Lowe, South Florida Sun Sentinel

The NRA and gun control

The NRA and gun control

Chan Lowe

Maybe the NRA and its triggerman-in-chief, Wayne LaPierre, have finally jumped the shark. In his “press conference” this morning, he blamed everything about American culture—except for our sick national love affair with guns—for the carnage in Connecticut, then offered more guns as an antidote. The only thing surprising about his solution was the tone-deaf brazenness coming from someone who is normally more image-savvy.

Only someone who lives for, organizes his life around, prioritizes and worships guns in a very unhealthy way can come up with the kind of “meaningful contribution” to resolving the mass-murder problem that LaPierre has managed to concoct. For most people who have guns in their lives, I would imagine that their firearm (or even, their collection of them) is but one component in a more complex and nuanced existence that includes work, family, religion, social groups and all the activities and interests that construct a fully-assimilated human being.

We can dream that maybe this time, reasonable, law-abiding, community-loving gun owners will have had enough, realizing that the leadership of the organization they support with their money and votes has seriously gone off the rails.

And that will ultimately be the key to weakening and eventually eliminating the NRA’s stranglehold on the American body politic and our national will. LaPierre has been kind enough to hand us the weapon in a glass display case—an attitude so irrational that more level-headed people will no longer wish to be associated with it.